Section 6.1 · Worked examples · 5 of 5
Worked example 6.1.5: Police radar gun
About the worked examples of Section 6.1
Five short calculations tied to the applications. They use only , , the polarisation vectors, Malus' law and the two-way Doppler shift, and no new physics. Numerical constants: , . The polarisation match of a wave and an antenna, with unit polarisation vectors written for the same , is , with for RHCP and LHCP along . A good way to use them: read the given quantities, produce the formula from the corresponding application or problem yourself, and only then put the numbers in.
Police radar gun
#Given. A K-band CW radar gun, . A car approaches at , and the beam makes the angle with the car's motion.
Find. (a) for , (b) the shift per km/h, (c) the speed displayed for and , (d) the echo frequency of a car moving away at the same speed.
Adapted from: D. K. Cheng, Field and Wave Electromagnetics, 2nd ed., Problem P.8-3.
The car first receives the wave as a moving observer and then re-radiates it as a moving source: two first-order shifts add up to .
and .
an audio tone: the echo arrives at .
per m/s, that is per km/h.
The gun assumes and divides by per km/h:
: the echo is at . A simple mixer gives the same tone for both directions, and the gun tells them apart with two mixers in quadrature (I/Q).
Set to below and read the speed the gun displays, for the true .
The cosine errors are and , the figures quoted in Application 6.1.5.
The relative shift is only , but as an audio tone it is measured to a few hertz in milliseconds. The cosine error always favours the driver, and the officer aims far ahead along the road to keep small.
cf. Application 6.1.5